Moon Jupiter Conjunction

Moon-Jupiter Conjunction, January 2013 (1000mm, 1080p, 15fps) from Jeff Sullivan on Vimeo.

I looked outside the other night and saw a bright object next to the moon.  Sky at Night Magazine had predicted that there would be a Moon and Jupiter conjunction on January 22, and I realized that it was about 6 am Uninversal Time on the 22nd.  I've taken photos of Jupiter at 400mm before, and those images can crop down to an effective 1000mm or so with no loss of resolution, so I set my camera outside to fire off a few hundred frames.

I had the intervalometer set to capture one frame every 3 seconds, and at that focal length and crop Jupiter only stays in a 16 x 9 HD-shaped frame for 210 shots, so I get either 7 seconds at 30 frames per second or 14 seconds at 15 frames per seconds.  The movement seemed a little less jerky at the slower frame rate, so that's what I've uploaded.  The movement could probably be smoothed out by taking the 30fps version and using software to simulate slow motion and inserting intermediate frames which track the movement of the moon and Jupiter... some day when I have all the time in the world, and the ultimate post-processing suite to go with it!